Corporate Jargon

I have been thinking outside the box lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I am still not as creative as I think I am. By thinking about this, (thinking about thinking outside the box), I am metacognating said corporate idiom.

The “why” behind thinking outside the box is key to understanding the “how”. If you are in a box, you suffocate, and therefore this tired piece of corporate jargon becomes fresh and new again, exciting, in fact, when a superior instructs one to do so. Personally, I enjoy being around the box, but not necessarily in it or out of it. I think the advantage to being around it is that you get the omniscient perspective, which makes one feel god-like and ultimately, like a creator. Creators are creative.

Look at the platypus, for instance. Who else but someone around the box–similar to “around the block”, which connotes sexual promiscuity–would conceive of a duck-billed “possum with fins?” You see what I mean. Back to “around the block”. When someone is referred to as one who has “been around the block”, you know that it is a sure sign that they most certainly have not been “around the block” and they are only saying it out desperation and fear. Anyone who has to assert sexual prowess or common knowledge on a consistent basis with a saying that refers to walking around in one’s neighborhood has a skewed self-perception.

I have had bosses like this, and therefore, when they ask me to think outside the box for an upcoming project, I have told them that I can see through their pathetic ruse of self-deception. After I am fired, I think about when they forced me to be creative against my own will and created the anti-creative within me. I hate that person inside me. She is like a little devil.

RE-INVENT THE WHEEL

Yesterday, in a meeting, my boss said we shouldn’t have to re-invent the wheel. The wheel was invented by cavemen, so I wondered if he was insinuating that somehow we were neanderthals or subhuman. I also wondered that, if he was so enlightened about not having to re-invent the wheel, why he didn’t know that from the beginning, that is, why he waited until we actually all did re-invent the wheel to tell us that. This proves that my boss is also a caveman, just like us.

PUSH THE ENVELOPE

You can’t push the envelope. First of all, it didn’t do anything to you. You don’t have to push it. It’s not like it slept with your sister. It’s paper for crying out loud. I mean, pushing paper is like pushing pencils and they didn’t do anything to you either. And it’s so discriminating that you would choose an envelope out of all the paper products. It’s totally bigoted. Letterhead is a really bastard and really is the one who deserves a good shove. Pushing the envelope is like slapping a baby in the face. After you do something like this, whatever you do next doesn’t hold much stock.

TOUCH BASE/ON THE SAME PAGEI had this conversation once regarding whether or not you could touch base and not be on the same page simultaneously. My colleague believes this is possible because it is equivalent to “agreeing to disagree”. My assertion is that one would touch base only if they were already on the same page to reinforce this fact. Why would you want to belabor the issue only to keep disagreeing? I think it is an excuse to talk to that person at that point.

TALK ABOUT IT OFFLINEI saw Tron the other day and there is no way you could keep hurling those discs around as much as they did. You’d get really tired.

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MORE TERMINOLOGY –from various Web sites

Seagull Manager:A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.

Blamestorming:Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

Assmosis:The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss.

Percussive maintenance:The art of smashing, whacking, kicking or punching a machine to get it to work.

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Published by linaramonav

Lina ramona Vitkauskas (Lithuanian-American-Canadian, b. 1973) is the author of White Stockings (White Hole Press, 2016); SPINY RETINAS (Mutable Sound, 2014); Professional Poetry (White Hole Press, 2013); A Neon Tryst (Shearsman Books, 2013); HONEY IS A SHE (Plastique Press, 2012); THE RANGE OF YOUR AMAZING NOTHING (Ravenna Press, 2010); Failed Star Spawns Planet/Star (dancing girl press, 2006); and Shooting Dead Films with Poets (Fractal Edge Press, 2004).
In 2013, she was selected by Eleni Sikelianos for the Henry Miller Memorial Library Ping Pong Journal Award, and in 2009, she was selected by Brenda Hillman for The Poetry Center of Chicago’s Juried Reading Award. She has also been nominated by Another Chicago Magazine for an Illinois Arts Council Award. Her publications include Rain Taxi, VIDA, Dusie (Canada), Atticus Review, POETBOOK, Spork, The Awl, Matter, Coconut, Tarpaulin Sky, Requited, DIAGRAM, TriQuarterly, The Chicago Review, The Toronto Quarterly, VLAK (Ed. Louis Armand, Edmund Berrigan), The Prague Literary Review, White Fungus (Taiwan; recently displayed at MoMA), and more.
In 2000, she earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from Wright State University, where she participated in a summer workshop with Nikky Finney, the 2012 National Book Award Winner in Poetry.
Lina is a current faculty member and the marketing director at the Chicago School of Poetics, as well as the co-editor/designer of the 14-year-running online literary magazine, milk magazine (featuring Robert Creeley, Wanda Coleman, Ron Padgett, Michael McClure, and Japanese surrealist, Yamamoto Kansuke, among others).
For 11 years, she has been a part of Chicago’s poetry community in many capacities—as a reader, collaborator, co-curator, co-founder, organizer/facilitator, instructor, literary arts nonprofit director, and contest judge. Reading series Lina has been featured in and projects she’s been involved with include: Chicago Public Radio’s “Chicago Amplified,” Myopic Books, Danny’s, Red Rover (@ OUTER SPACE), Woman Made Gallery, Series A, Quimby’s, Balzekas Lithuanian Museum, Wĭt Rabbit, Dollhouse Reading Series, 100,000 Poets for Change, HUMAN MICROPOEM at Occupy Chicago, Discrete, Around the Coyote, Future Perfect + New Media, Evanston Public Library, and many more.
Professionally, Lina holds certifications from Northwestern University (in philanthropy) and DePaul University (pedagogy), and possesses more than a decade of experience as a senior-level copywriter, editor, and marketing strategist for major clients such as Sears, McGraw Hill, and Northwestern University.
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